T. Rowe Price Group, the largest independent shareholder of VMware, opposes a potential merger of the private Dell Technologies with VMware. Such a transaction would be “detrimental to VMware,” Taymour Tamaddon, portfolio manager of the T. Rowe Institutional Large-Cap Growth fund (ticker: (TRLGX), tells Barron’s. T Rowe Price held 12.4 million shares of VMware (ticker VMW) on Dec. 31, 2017, or about 17% of the public float in the company, and 3% of the total shares outstanding. Dell holds an 82% interest in VMware, which has 403 million shares outstanding.

What Drove Adobe Stock to All-Time High? Earlier in the series, we discussed the factors and offerings that are expected to drive Adobe’s (ADBE) growth in fiscal 2018. Earlier this week, Jim Cramer, host of CNBC’s “Mad Money,” highlighted a new stock selection in the tech space that he calls “the cloud kings.” He gave this distinction to seven software companies “that are transforming the way their customers do business.” Adobe, ServiceNow (NOW), Red Hat (RHT), VMware (VMW), Splunk (SPLK), and Workday (WDAY) made Cramer’s list.

One of VMware’s largest investors has responded to rumors of a potential reverse merger with Dell Technologies by calling it a “terrible” idea and urged the board to end talks. In a public letter it sent out on Monday , Jericho Capital Asset Management, which holds a 1.8 percent stake in VMware, said that the Palo Alto-based company would “gain nothing” besides debt. Dell already owns an 80 percent stake in VMware, a cloud virtualization company, and a merger could take Texas-based Dell public again.

Privately held Dell, majority owner of VMware (VMW), this morning reported quarterly results, and the Street is of course picking through it for clues to VMware, given that the latter’s stock has been weighed down by rumors Michael Dell would like to take his company public via a reverse merger with VMware. The company this morning didn’t comment on such speculation, but Keith Bachman of BMO Capital, who has an Outperform rating on VMware shares, concludes from today’s conference call with management that “some form of transaction is more likely to occur than not." He feels that is the case given that "VMware contributes a significant portion of Dell’s consolidated free cash flow, particularly since storage results remain weak." He explains: In FY2018, Dell generated consolidated OCF of $6.8 billion and FCF of $5.2 billion, including VMware’s contribution of $3.2 billion and $2.9 billion, respectively, or over 50% of Dell’s consolidated FCFs.

Wall Street continues to asses last Thursday’s fiscal Q4 beat by VMware (VMW), and results continue to be overshadowed by the prospect of a reverse merger with privately held Dell, VMware’s majority owner. Someone who’s a little less ebullient about the report itself is Maxim Group analyst Nehal Chokshi. Today, he reiterates a Hold rating on the stock, though he raises his price target to $134 from $123, writing that the results show a deceleration in the “billings” and “bookings” of individual lines of business: Normalizing for the benefit of: (1) DELL (private) pushing VMW products over others, (2) FX, and (3) the mega- DXC booking in the October 2017 Q, we estimate billings decelerated from 10% y/ y in the October 2017 Q to 8% y/y in the January 2017 Q (vs. up 20% y/y in the Oct 2017 Q to 13% y/y on an as-is basis).

The boutique research house GBH Insights today offers up a report from analyst Daniel Ives, who takes a look at the speculation about VMware (VMW), and whether it may be forced to merge with Dell, and concludes, much as my colleague Andrew Bary did in this week’s Barron’s print magazine, that the move would be a very bad one for VMware shareholders. Reports surfaced late last week that Michael Dell, founder and CEO of Dell, is working on details of merging his privately held company into VMware, of which Dell is the majority owner, as a way to bring Dell public again.